Goodbye, Janie
by Astromancer
Summary: Two pilgrims from Texas come to the outskirts of DC and discover the price of trying to find something better...


Astromancer,

FO3 Fan-fic.

11/25/10

**1**

Two figures strode atop an overpass long derelict of activity. Long-dead occupants of rusted-out vehicles sat slumped in their seats, empty sockets of flash-fried eyes ignoring their new company. A breeze of hot dust gave resistance to the travelers' progress and hot, solar light scorched their makeshift travel-wear. The wasteland bloomed brown out into a dead distance of post-society. It was eerie, the silence, the inactivity, but for them it was peace. They'd come into the outskirts of DC all the way from Texas, to escape the horrors brought on by the cults and cartels that had come up from the irradiated ground like rodents to build post-apocalyptic empires. Texas, or, what used to be Texas, was now a land of mutation and death. So they had set out, on paths that had been relatively safe given to them by old maps and a few trading contacts.

The entire flight had been hard to plan, and hell to implement, but after a two-and-a-half years of steering clear of urban areas and occasionally thinking they would never see light again in subway tunnels, they had arrived in the former nation's capital. They had hoped to settle here, for a few years, and find a boat to take them up the Potomac and onto the west-coast to find a larger boat. To find a way across the ocean to where they knew Europe lay, perhaps not so destroyed as here. But for now, there was this overpass. _This fucking overpass_ was the term used in the mind of the male of the two pilgrims. This wasn't the first one that they'd had to be on, but it was the most unstable so far…

It began to move, ever so slightly, with the breeze. "Shit..". the wind subsided as the word escaped his mouth. He put an arm on his counterpart's shoulder, and she exhaled slowly.

"We need to get off this thing, sooner than later. We can tie off a line there-" She pointed to a low-jutting slump of collapsed concrete about a fifth of a mile up "-and just follow from ground level. I don't like this thing".

He nodded in agreement, not wanting to say anything that would entice the wind further. The thing was at least forty feet high, and it had a slight lean to one side that had seemed to increase a bit with the gust. They kept walking, and in a good fifteen minutes of silently scooting past rusted-out cars they came to the collapsed point, that provided a ten-foot slope of twisted rebar off the side. He removed the coil of nylon rope from his pack (courtesy of an abandoned hardware store a few miles back), and she began to test the iron with her feet, and finally to grab onto and climb down it.

"Toss me the coil!" she called, her deft palms sweating against the hot rust. She barred her teeth.

"..shouldn't we just tie it higher up?". Although he had to pose the question, he knew that any small six or eight foot gap between the rope and the ground could mean a broken ankle, or even a fracture. These things were impermissible in the wastes.

She said nothing, only waited for the rope. She wanted off this fucking overpass as much as he did. She was about five feet five, and hundred pounds, give or take. She wore a windbreaker that bore no trace of it's original color, and stained jeans and hiking boots of the same color that she had come to think of as "wasteland brown". Her hair was dirty, brown, and medium length (she would cut it again soon; she had learned her lesson when a feral ghoul took a fistful of it out of her scalp in a subway tunnel), and at the moment her face was sweat streaked and in an expression of discomfort and concentration.

She examined her knot and dropped the coil. The rope unfurled and hung three feet or so from the ground. She shot him a thumbs up, and as he drew his rifle to cover her descent (they had also learned, from several incidents of mutie animal ambush, that it was always correct to have a weapon ready when the other person's hands were occupied), the wind picked up again.

She froze, her hands on the rope as the overpass' lean increased by at least a foot. Then two. The creak of the ancient rebar was terrible, and the long motionless vehicles began to slide. She screamed. Higher up, he had begun to panic.

"**JANIE! CLIMB DOWN! GET OFF THIS THING NOW!" **He made a valiant attempt at staying upright, but the next gust took him off his feet, and he hit the short, concrete sidewall hard. Hard, but conscious. The entire thing was about to fall over, and there was nothing to be done.

"**GET DOWN! HURRY THE FUCK UP, IT'S GONNA FALL!"** he was miserable with fear, powerless.

The final gust didn't knock it down, not all the way, but gave it another ten feet of lean in one, savage push. The sound of the crashing cars was deafening, and the vertigo of the movement almost knocked him out. The part of the concrete sidewall where he was had somehow held as a car came and pinned his right leg against it. He let out a scream, and his vision filled with black splotches.

He just laid there for a minute, his leg gone into shock, before risking a peak over the edge of the little, now diagonal sidewall. He saw dozens of cars, fallen to the ground in heaps of radioactive scrap. No visible engine fires. That was good. If one were to explode, its fission-core would certainly set off the others around it, and those would bring down the overpass in a heap of melted rebar and concrete fragments. That would be very bad. But, this was not the thing currently on his mind.

"**JANIE! **_**JANIE!**_** TALK TO ME, WHERE ARE YOU!"** A small figure lay among the crushed cars, and twitched slightly at the sound of her name. Janie was not dead. _Only unconscious, hurt, or dying, _he thought. He was filled with dread. He had to get his leg free. His left was not trapped, so he used it as leverage, but to no avail. He put his left foot against the body of the green, tail-finned monster and pushed with everything he had in him, only to tear his leg farther and pass out. If he tried to pull it out further, he'd only succeed in increasing his bleeding (jagged, rusty metal had dug in on impact). He thought he'd certainly die. But what about her? He lay there and closed his eyes out of shock and exhaustion. The wasteland's pseudo-natural hazards had claimed another two victims, it would seem.

His train of thought went back through the trip, which had just ended badly: _I miss the hills, as crawling with cult fucks as they were. So pretty in the sunset, and there was green grass, healthy plants in some places. The fucking drugs and the fucking cults had to drive us out, make it all shit. Fuck them. Fuck those assholes, who just crushed my leg, and maybe killed Janie by making things so shitty there. Goddammit … _He cried a bit in his delirium, and then he slept.

When he awoke, it was much dimmer, much cooler, and he was still pinned to the sidewall. He looked West, the direction that the overpass had leaned, and the direction that the sun was setting. Irradiated color danced across the sky in a beautiful show of light. He stared at it, wondering if it would be the last thing he saw before his last night in the Wastes began. He squinted, and wondered, with dread, if what he saw could be real.

Against the sunset, the small silhouettes of far-off figures emerged. He watched them grow larger as the light faded, and just as it was nearly gone, he saw something to make the panic in him re-awake: the figures were hulking. Huge, muscular in stature and eight feet tall at least. Mutants, for sure. He looked down at Janie, who he could see was breathing still. The adrenalin fought off some of his shock.

"Fuck no, fuck no, **JANIE! WAKE UP!" **She stirred slightly, but did nothing otherwise. Shit.

It was dark now, and the figures approached fast, with purpose. They were the one paramount fear that he'd had about their arrival in DC from the start, learned about through scavengers and by coming across their handiwork. They had to be Super-Mutants, and he and Janie were currently in no position to hide or run. A terror like he never felt before bloomed within him, and he unwillingly entertained the thought of them grabbing her where she lay and carrying her off, perhaps shooting him before they leave, or simply ignoring him, or coming up to get him too.

_Janie…Jesus fuck, not this. What the fuck is this?..._


End file.
